BMW Working On Emergency Stop Assistant

An astonishingly common problem that often goes unreported is the situation where a driver loses control of their vehicle after suffering a serious health-related problem when driving. To address this problem, BMW is working on a new system that will allow the car to be brought to a safe and controlled stop on the side of the road during a health-related emergency. Labelled the “Emergency Stop Assistant”, it is currently in the prototype stage and works by triggering an autonomous driving mode whenever it notices that the driver has a serious medical problem.

This autonomous driving mode will then execute a controlled emergency stop by bringing the vehicle to a complete stop automatically, while also allowing for any surrounding traffic. Simultaneously, an emergency call is sent out containing information required to start the necessary medical and traffic-related assistance measures. Development is being managed together with the German government under the new SmartSenior research project, but there is no market release date as of yet.